Adams, Douglas – Hitchhiker’s Trilogy 4 – So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Chapter 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

“I’m just trying to get this entirely clear in my mind,” said Arthur, “you say you felt as if the Earth actually … exploded

…”

“Yes. More than felt.”

“Which is what everybody else says,” he said hesitantly, “is hallucinations?”

“Yes, but Arthur that’s ridiculous. People think that if you just say `hallucinations’ it explains anything you want it to explain and eventually whatever it is you can’t understand will just go away. It’s just a word, it doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain why the dolphins disappeared.”

“No,” said Arthur. “No,” he added thoughtfully. “No,” he added again, even more thoughtfully. “What?” he said at last.

“Doesn’t explain the dolphins disappearing.”

“No,” said Arthur, “I see that. Which dolphins do you mean?”

“What do you mean which dolphins? I’m talking about when all the dolphins disappeared.”

She put her hand on his knee, which made him realize that the tingling going up and down his spine was not her gently stroking his back, and must instead be one of the nasty creepy feelings he so often got when people were trying to explain things to him.

“The dolphins?”

“Yes.”

“All the dolphins,” said Arthur, “disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“The dolphins? You’re saying the dolphins all disappeared? Is this,” said Arthur, trying to be absolutely clear on this point, “what you’re saying?”

“Arthur where have you been for heaven’s sake? The dolphins all disappeared on the same day I …”

She stared him intently in his startled eyes.

“What …?”

“No dolphins. All gone. Vanished.”

She searched his face.

“Did you really not know that?”

It was clear from his startled expression that he did not.

“Where did they go?” he asked.

“No one knows. That’s what vanished means.” She paused. “Well, there is one man who says he knows about it, but everyone says he lives in California,” she said, “and is mad. I was thinking of going to see him because it seems the only lead I’ve got on what happened to me.”

She shrugged, and then looked at him long and quietly. She lay her hand on the side of his face.

“I really would like to know where you’ve been,” she said. “I think something terrible happened to you then as well. And that’s why we recognized each other.”

She glanced around the park, which was now being gathered into the clutches of dusk.

“Well,” she said, “now you’ve got someone you can tell.”

Arthur slowly let out a long year of a sigh.

“It is,” he said, “a very long story.”

Fenchurch leaned across him and drew over her canvas bag.

“Is it anything to do with this?” she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travelworn as it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half-buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapoured oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words “Don’t Panic”.

“Where did you get this?” said Arthur, startled, taking it from her.

“Ah,” she said, “I thought it was yours. In Russell’s car that night. You dropped it. Have you been to many of these places?”

Arthur drew the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from its cover. It was like a small, thin, flexible lap computer. He tapped some buttons till the screen flared with text.

“A few,” he said.

“Can we go to them?”

“What? No,” said Arthur abruptly, then relented, but relented warily. “Do you want to?” he said, hoping for the answer no. It was an act of great generosity on his part not to say, “You don’t want to, do you?” which expects it.

“Yes,” she said. “I want to know what the message was that I lost, and where it came from. Because I don’t think,” she added, standing up and looking round the increasing gloom of the park, “that it came from here.”

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